Solomon: McHale outcoaching Brooks as young Rockets grow up

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One thing about being so wrong about the Rockets in this year’s playoffs is that I wasn’t wrong about the Rockets.

I’ve been saying all year how tough they are. How good they can be. How tough they are to play.

I know that Oklahoma City is a much better team than Houston. Even with Russell Westbrook out, I figured OKC was still quite a bit better.

I still think I’m right about that. The Rockets don’t.

I couldn’t have been more wrong in thinking this series would be a four-game sweep.

Coulda wouldas don’t play on my turntables, so I don’t listen to what could have been had Houston won one of the two games it lost in the series when it held the lead in the final minute.

The wins in Games 4 and 5 are impressive enough.

Scott Brooks is getting manhandled by Kevin McHale. Now, that is something I should have seen coming.

Not that McHale is a coaching genius, but Brooks has so benefitted from a talented roster that his shortcomings have been harder to spot. But, man, he made some curious decisions.

The Hack-A-Turk move of fouling Asik backfired in a big way. Thank goodness.

There are few things in sports I hate more than the intentional foul, Hack-A-Whomever strategy in basketball. It’s cheesy, weak and should be penalized more severely by the rules.

Basketball is a free-flowing game. Intentional fouls disgust me. At least make a player have to make a play on the ball.

Intentional fouls should be two shots and the ball. People who claim all a player has to do is make free throws to kill the strategy ignore the point that it is a cheap ploy.

At the very least, the NBA should create a rule that if you intentionally foul a guy away from the ball and he is outside the 3-point line, he should get three free throws. Maybe then coaches would be discouraged from using the silly tactic.

After the games, Brooks had a Kubiak moment, when he said he was prepared to pull the strategy if the Thunder got to within seven points of the lead.

He obviously wasn’t watching, as OKC got to within seven points of the lead at the 5:26 mark and again at 5:08, but kept hacking Asik.

Reminded me of the time Gary Kubiak rushed his offense up to the line of scrimmage on fourth down and ran a quarterback sneak against the Chargers because he thought they could easily get half a yard. And they did get half a yard. Unfortunately, they needed a yard and a half. Oops.